Mana dorks

The inclusion of mana dorks in Magic: the Gathering decks has been a game-shaping dynamic ceded in the original MTG sets and that's where today's history lesson begins, mana dorks.

Your Magic: The Gathering decks need mana. It doesn't matter what style of deck it is, what colours, or how fast it is, if you don't have the mana to play the spells, it's as good as dead in the water. While some colours, like green, are brilliant at ramping out lands, every colour can benefit from mana rocks and mana dorks. Mana rituals may be a little bit more limited, but the effect is still the same: with just a few choice spells, you can have access to more mana than you thought possible, and hopefully outpace your opponents. Here is everything you need to know about mana rocks, mana dorks, and mana rituals in MTG.

Mana dorks

While one-mana dorks usually just tap for mana, two-mana dorks can do anything from provide pressure to win the game with infinite mana! One-drops tend to just offer you one extra mana and very little else - but if you jump up to the two-drop slot, all of a sudden you're getting mana dorks with significant upside. Whether it's producing more than one mana, providing some sort of utility in combat, growing their own stats or even being the centerpiece of a powerful combo, some of Magic's two-drop mana dorks have ended up being extremely powerful cards in their own right. Let's have a look at some of the best of them! Llanowar Loamspeaker. We've seen two-drop mana dorks that end up turning into more sizeable threats as the game goes long Drover of the Mighty , Reclusive Taxidermist , but Llanowar Loamspeaker seems to have the potential to be a reusable source of decent threats that never has to get into combat itself. Wall of Roots. Wall of Roots was once a Constructed staple, particularly in Modern, where it powered up creature-focused midrange decks with sacrifice subthemes such as Birthing Pod RIP, taken from us too soon. Sylvan Caryatid. Sylvan Caryatid is just about the gold standard for five-color fixing when you don't have access to Birds of Paradise. These days it sees play in Pioneer's Five-Color Niv to Light, of course, but it has a history that goes back a long way before that. It was a Standard powerhouse when Theros was around, but in Modern it did its best work in a combo deck with Jeskai Ascendancy. With hexproof, you were much closer to guaranteeing your untappable mana dork would survive and provide you with the colors you need while you churn through your deck with cantrips and eventually win with an unearthed Fatestitcher.

In the same way that Priest of Titania mana dorks intended as a card to play on the second turn to ramp into a big turn three, so was Metalworker designed to provide the same utility in an artifact deck. Jake was first introduced to Magic inand has been a regular at his LGS ever since, mana dorks.

Deathrite Shaman Illustration by Steve Argyle. Mana dorks are a usually cheap creature that does nothing but generate mana and accelerate you. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to cast a wide net and include any utility creature that adds mana, filters mana, or searches up lands. Mana dorks may not seem that powerful at first. But any experienced player will tell you that getting early mana acceleration like that can slingshot you ahead in the game, allowing you to deploy cards your opponent can't handle.

The inclusion of mana dorks in Magic: the Gathering decks has been a game-shaping dynamic ceded in the original MTG sets and that's where today's history lesson begins. Mana dork is commonplace MTG slang for a creature with a low converted mana cost typically a one or two-drop that produces mana to help a deck cast its spells more efficiently. The role of these creatures within a strategy is to help smooth out draws and cast the other spells in the deck more efficiently, on time and on curve. Essentially, mana dorks are an extension of a deck's mana base but always in the form of creatures. It's also significant to note that because mana dorks are always creatures, they die to the various creature removal spells that people tend to play and so the key dynamic is that they create significant tactical advantages in terms of accelerating, ramping and fixing your mana, but always contingent on upon the mana dork surviving a full turn cycle to be able to use its activated ability to produce mana. It's a basic and significant interaction because there are several pieces of strategic insight latent in that statement:. Subsets of mana dork creatures, when deployed on the first or second turn, have great capacity to accelerate a player into bigger or more impactful sequences ahead of the curve. Using removal to curtail this burst of mana acceleration is commonplace counterplay to mana dork strategies. Mana dorks are typically not "threats" in the sense that they are used to pressure an opponent's life total in a significant way, but rather their "threat level" is contingent upon providing access to more or better mana because they break the parity of the one land per turn rule.

Mana dorks

Magic: The Gathering 's popular Commander format is filled to the brim with unique and distinct strategies and archetypes for players to utilize when building their decks. Regardless of the type of deck a player may be building, there are various types of cards that can be a great asset to nearly any type of deck. In addition to mana-generating artifacts, often referred to as mana rocks , a popular mana ramp choice for many players to utilize creatures that are capable of being able to produce mana. Referred to as "mana dorks," these types of creatures have been part of the game since Magic's very first set and have made an impact ever since. However, between elements such as flexibility and efficiency, mana dorks come in various forms, ranging significantly in quality. So we're going to examine the mana dorks of Magic's history and see which are the most powerful within the Commander format! Noble Hierarch And Ignoble Hierarch are cards with the same mana costs and nearly identical abilities only possessing differing creature types and color identities. A green Human Druid and Goblin Shaman respectively, these one mana creatures each possess the exalted ability whilst being able to be tapped to produce one of three colors of mana. This allows them to function as flexible low-mana mana ramp in their respective color identities that has the added upside of being able to push damage into an opponent through its access to exalted.

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It was a Standard powerhouse when Theros was around, but in Modern it did its best work in a combo deck with Jeskai Ascendancy. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to cast a wide net and include any utility creature that adds mana, filters mana, or searches up lands. Completely changing the game for Angels decks, Giada has quickly become the most popular commander for Angel tribal in EDH, and that's not all. Mana dorks are usually one or two drops that have the ability to produce mana. While mana dorks typically don't synergize well with certain strategies mass removal for instance , their ability to provide chip damage does synergize and lend itself to other types of strategies: for instance, combo, mana denial and Equipment-based decks. It's a card that requires an Edict or sweeper to remove once deployed. Great point. Soldevi Adnate. Noble is such a popular and useful card that it even spawned a friend in Modern Horizons 2! Slightly more usable than the Arcanist is Karfell Harbinger.

Your Magic: The Gathering decks need mana. It doesn't matter what style of deck it is, what colours, or how fast it is, if you don't have the mana to play the spells, it's as good as dead in the water.

In the same way that Priest of Titania was intended as a card to play on the second turn to ramp into a big turn three, so was Metalworker designed to provide the same utility in an artifact deck. Another dynamic we should always keep in mind when thinking about mana dorks is the role they provide within mana fixing as a larger archetype within the game. Until now, that is - Double Masters has caused Bloom Tender to plummet in cost, bringing this infamous mana dork down to a much more reasonable price line. Ultimately, in terms of what you pay up front relative to what the card provides, Deathrite Shaman is not only the best mana dork of all time, but likely the best creature of all time. Dreamscape Artist. For example, the blue creature Apprentice Wizard will give you three colourless mana if you tap it, but you will also need to pay one blue mana first. Weathered Wayfarer. Mana dorks are usually one or two drops that have the ability to produce mana. Priest of Forgotten Gods. Burnished Hart. Eetu September 4, pm. I'm actually a big fan of when design finds ways to work mana development into colors that are not green.